In This Edition......

WHO PAYS WHAT? THE LATEST INCOME TAX FIGURES 
ANOTHER SHOOTING IN GUN-CONTROL COUNTRY
NEW YORKERS DON'T BELIEVE HITLARY
UH OH. THE DEMOCRATS AREN’T GOING TO LIKE THIS.









WHO PAYS WHAT? THE LATEST INCOME TAX FIGURES 
I think I get more requests for these figures than anything else. It’s who earns what percentage of the total taxable income in this country, and what percentage of the total income taxes do they actually pay? The Congressional Budget Office has just released the figures for 1998. This is the last year for which complete figures are available. Here’s your table:

Average Income Income Tax Paid 

Top 1 %             $269,496     34.75 % 
Top 5 %             $114,729     53.84 % 
Top 10 %             $83,220     65.04 % 
Top 25 %             $50,607     82.69 % 
Top 50 %             $25,491     95.79 % 
Bottom 50 % <     $25,491     4.21 %


Every year it’s the same story. The Percentage of the income taxes paid by the top income earners increases while the percentage of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of income earners goes down. Every year millions of additional taxpayers – all on the low end of the income totem – disappear from the tax rolls altogether. 

I know, you want to know just what percentage of the total taxable income is earned by each one of these groups. Fair question. First I’ll give you the figures, then I’ll give you a link to some IRS data you need to verify what I’m telling you. 

The top 1% of income earners? They earned 18.5% of the income. They paid 34.75% of the income taxes. Seem fair? 

The top 5% earned 25.7% of the income. The top 10% earned 36.9%. 
For each one of these groups you will find that they paid a higher percentage of the income taxes than their share of the total income. EXCEPT ONE! When you look at the figures for the bottom 50% you sill see that they only paid 4.21% of the income taxes, yet they earned 15.6% of the income. 

Here’s your link to this data, and a whole lot more. 

http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincometable.html

AND JUST WHY IS THIS SO DANGEROUS? 

I’ve been preaching this for a while now ---- and I don’t see why it isn’t on every conservative or libertarian pundit’s mind.
With every single year that passes we see more and more of the income tax burden being carried by the high-income earners while those in the bottom 60% of income earners pay less and less. 

We only have two things we can use to control those who control the police power of government … the law and the ballot box. 

When it comes to income tax, the law isn’t on our side. These people in Washington can take as much as they agree upon --- and they don’t believe there should be any limit! Over the years I’ve had a chance to talk to quite a few of these men and women, from both sides of the aisle, and there is one question that they absolutely will not answer. That question is “Congressman So-and-So, what do you think should be the absolute legal maximum amount that the federal government can take out of a person’s earnings as income tax?”

Oh, you’ll get all sorts of mipping and mupping, hemming and hawing, but you won’t get an answer. These people do not want to put any limit at all on what they can take. 
That leaves the ballot box, and things aren’t much better there. With every year that passes the ballot box becomes more and more meaningless when it comes to tax matters. And why? Simple! Look at the figures! Right now we have 83% of the taxes being paid by only 25% of the taxpayers! That figure is easily extrapolated to 83% of the income taxes being paid by 25% of the voters! Do you get the picture? When you propose a big tax cut you’re appealing to a big, whopping 25% of the voters! But … when you propose more spending programs for middle and lower income taxpayers, you’re appealing to 75% of the voters … and the figures get more skewed every single year!
What’s more, you can propose a tax cut that affects only middle and low income earners and get the support of 75% of the voters! Who cares about the other 25%? Their money is all that matters. 

It’s just so simple. These politicians in D.C. are moving this country to the absolute point-of-no-return insofar as spending and taxing is concerned. Remember, the absolute number-one job of each and every one of the politicians, with a few rare exceptions, is to make sure they get reelected – to keep their jobs, their privileges, there perks. Absolutely nothing is more important to them than getting reelected. There are votes out there for sale. People who crave government-provided security far more than liberty, and there are politicians who will meet these voters at the polling place with government checks and government programs. All paid for by that 25% of the electorate whose votes these politicians don’t need. 





ANOTHER SHOOTING IN GUN-CONTROL COUNTRY

A man opened fire in a shopping center in Toronto, Canada, yesterday. He injured two people, then fled the scene. Onlookers said the mall was "like a war zone."

In Canada, you have to have a license to buy a gun or ammunition. More than half of the nation's legally owned and registered pistols became illegal five years ago. The owners of these guns could either sell their guns back to dealers, render them inoperable, or surrender them to the government without compensation. As of January 1, anyone who owns a rifle or a shotgun but didn't apply for a license faces a five-year prison sentence and a $2,000 fine. All long guns have to be registered by January 1, 2003. And no one, except for very few politicians and retired policemen, is permitted to carry a concealed weapon.

Hey ... that strong gun control really works, doesn't it?

The man who opened fire didn't care about the no-carry laws--just as the man who killed seven co-workers in Wakefield, Massachusetts, didn't seem overly concerned about the anti-gun laws there. 

Gun control doesn't reduce crime. It only prevents you, the law-abiding citizen, from gaining access to the tools you need for effective self-defense. 

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010225/wl/canada_mall_shooting_2.html





NEW YORKERS DON'T BELIEVE HITLARY

Are we finally seeing a bit of buyer's remorse in New York?

According to the latest Zogby poll, 58 percent of New Yorkers don't believe Hillary Clinton's contention that she didn't know her brother Hugh was being paid to get presidential pardons for two convicted felons. Only 33 percent believe her. And her favorable rating has slipped since last month. Last month, her favorable-unfavorable rating was 56 percent to 39 percent; Zogby's latest numbers put the ratio at 51 percent to 46 percent.

Hopefully, this is just the tip of the iceberg. By 2004, we can only hope that New York and the rest of America will see Queen Hillary for the lying, power-hungry socialist she is.







UH OH. THE DEMOCRATS AREN’T GOING TO LIKE THIS

We need to try to get Ft. Lauderdale Democrat Peter Deutsch on the air again today. You remember him. He's the rabid Democrat who has been telling anyone who would listen that Gore really won the election in Florida and that soon everybody would know that he should be in the White house.



Well, bad news for Herr Deutsch. A consortium of newspapers, including USA Today, The Miami Herald and Knight Ridder newspapers have completed a full and total recount of all the "undervotes" in Miami-Dade County. The results were exactly what I told you they would be last December. 



Gore loses.



Remember, the Democrats were telling everyone that Gore would gain about 600 votes with a full recount. Well, that turned out not to be the case. Under the most lenient standards -- the standards most favorable to Democrats -- Gore scored a net gain of just 49 votes. This standard allows for even counting dimpled chads! A big, screaming 49 votes! If the standard had been more stringent -- in other words -- if they counted the votes according to the standards in place on the day the vote was taken, it would have been a net gain for Bush.



The Democrats based their initial claim that Gore would gain 600 votes on the initial recount of 135 of Miami-Dade's 616 precincts. It took no brains at all to see that those 135 precincts were the only heavily-democratic precincts in Miami-Dade. The rest of the precincts were Republican territory.



Hey, Deutsch. What's your next line of BS going to be?

Neil Boortz is a syndicated talk show host based in Atlanta Georgia. You can visit his website at http://www.boortz.com.